Outrageous Redactions to the Russia Report

The Department of Justice and FBI have just been caught red-handed in some outrageous acts of cover-up, via the Russia report agents with these departments released just recently.

Basically, the redactions show it’s not President Donald Trump was guilty of any wrongdoing with Russia during election season. The fingers of blame point more inward, at the Deep State types who’ve been so angry about this president’s White House win.

The feds basically say the American public has no right to know anything about U.S. intelligence operations — that the American people should simply shut up and trust the government.

But it’s that attitude that only raises red flags and makes a good patriot wonder: Just what are these people trying to hide, anyway?

The National Review lays it out:

The FBI and DOJ have been burying the investigators’ questionable judgments and information helpful to Flynn.

Cute how this works: Kick off the week with some “the Department of Justice is not going to be extorted” bombast from Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, by which he rationalizes that his defiance of subpoenas and slow-walking document production to Congress — which is probing investigative irregularities related to the 2016 campaign — is required by DOJ policy and “the rule of law.” Then end the week with the Friday-night bad-news dump: the grudging removal of DOJ and FBI redactions from a House Intelligence Committee report on Russia’s election meddling.

Now that we can see what they wanted to conceal, it is clear, yet again, that the Justice Department and the FBI cannot be trusted to decide what the public gets to learn about their decision-making.

They tell us that their lack of transparency is necessary for the protection of national security, vital intelligence, and investigative operations. But what we find out is that they were concealing their own questionable judgments and conflicting explanations for their actions; their use of foreign-intelligence and criminal-investigative authorities to investigate Michael Flynn, Trump’s top campaign supporter and former national-security adviser; and their explicitly stated belief that Flynn did not lie in the FBI interview for which Special Counsel Robert Mueller has since prosecuted him on false-statements charges.

It is a fact of life that the precious commodity of a good reputation takes much less time to lose than to build.

There is no defending the redactions that have now been disclosed. Especially in light of recent history, this powerfully suggests that there is no justification for withholding much else that the Justice Department refuses to reveal.

Republican committees can carp all they like about Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein. The buck stops with the president. …

There is no Department of Justice in the Constitution. It is an executive-branch component created by Congress, funded with taxpayer funds appropriated by Congress, and subject to congressional oversight to ensure that its operations are conducted in accordance with their statutory purposes. Because of the sensitivity of their law-enforcement and intelligence missions, the Justice Department and its premier agency, the FBI, are shown great deference when lawmakers make requests — or even demands — for information. Contrary to what Justice Department leadership apparently believes, this deference is not an entitlement. It is result of respect earned over time by an institution that — its proud alumni like to believe — has a tradition of dealing honorably and transparently with peer branches of government.